Saturday, 21 November 2009

As if the borderline antisemitic Dispatches: Inside Britain's Israel Lobby wasn't enough, next Friday (27 November) Channel 4 will be airing a documentary that sounds possibly worse.Their Unreported World documentary series describes itself as "Critically acclaimed foreign affairs series offering an insight into the lives of people in some of the most neglected parts of the planet - lives largely overlooked by the global news machine".This time the episode takes place in Israel, where they investigate the growth and influence of "Jewish 'fundamentalists'" in Israel.According to the summary of the programme, the ultra-Orthodox Haredis are accused of "creating tension within Israeli society and endangering any negotiations on a peace deal with the Palestinians."Mea Shearim is described as a "poor, overcrowded part of the city where everyone is wearing clothes in the style of 18th-century Europe", where one nutter who is obviously going to be portrayed as representing all the Haredis says "We are the real Jews... everyone else in Israel just happens to be born Jewish."Another Haredi says "Every 20 years we have a community that is growing at eight or nine times... It means we are growing in size and influence." Could be another nutter, or could be that his comments were taken out of context. After all what "influence" do they have? If they're anything as influential as Britain's Israel lobby it's certainly nothing to worry about. A reform Rabbi tells the reporter that "because Haredis are exempt from military service and heavily subsidised, they are creating huge tensions within the country." This must be the only time that people who aren't fighting in the Israeli army are the ones that are villified.And then it just gets worse and worse. I will state the obvious here: Haredis are not perfect. No one is. Their lifestyle choices may be "extreme" but if it's not killing anyone then where's the harm? Take segregation of men and women on buses, for example. Extreme, yes, but if they want to adhere to the laws of the Torah more stringently than other Jews, by taking extra measures to prevent touching between sexes, that's their call. It's not imposing on more secular Israelis in the rest of the country. When Haredis do something morally wrong though, such as a woman's claim in the programme that she was beaten up by a "Haredi Modesty Squad" after she left her husband, that is disgusting and inexcusable. And the vast majority of Haredis would agree with me. After all, their aim is to keep the Torah, and nowhere in the Torah does it say to beat up a woman for anything. You get psychos in every community.However, it is clear from the summary of the programme that is goes out of its way to seek out only the bad in the Haredi community, and then portray that as the norm with complete disregard for whatever good that they do, and their contributions to Israeli society. Even their involvement in politics is portrayed as sinister. It's the Israel lobby all over again.

Tuesday, 17 November 2009

By now everyone will be aware of the Channel 4 documentary about the Jewish (sorry, Israel) Lobby, that aired last night. To save you having to watch it I have summarised what I learnt:

The Israeli flag is creepy and when it’s waving next to the British flag it means Zionists are about to attack the British. (The Good British, not the pro-Israel British.)

It is wrong for journalists to write articles sympathetic to the dangers and threats Israel has from the Arab world. It is wrong for them to travel to Israel on trips funded by the pro-Israel lobby BICOM where they might learn something about the situation there other than that “Israel is bad”. They are only allowed to write articles that show that Israel is bad.

BICOM’s donor owns a stake in a mall in the “settlement” Maaleh Adumim. This means he is a bad man and BICOM is bad.

The lobbies are AGGRESSIVE to the media, they SCARE them and keep them “under constant attack”. The lobbies are bad.

It's ok to compare Israel with apartheid South Africa as the Guardian did and it's not antisemitic and does not cause antisemitism as The Lobby was concerned. (Although "Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions." and “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” [my italics] are antisemitic. But that's not what the programme's doing, is it.)

CAMERA is "aggressive" against "what it calls" anti-Israel reporting. In actual fact there is no anti-Israel reporting, all media coverage of Israel is favourable (because of The Lobby). The Press Complaints Commission found “only one small fact” to be wrong in the Guardian article comparing Israel to South Africa, so it’s ok. And CAMERA is bad.

Self hating Jews who call Israel apartheid are good and right. And don’t deserve to be called self-hating even if they are. Jews who don’t call Israel apartheid, or who love or support Israel, are bad and liars. But not all Jews do love Israel, so not all Jews are bad, and therefore that statement can’t be antisemitic.

Cif Watch!! Is bad. It called the Guardian antisemitic. The Guardian isn’t, nor are it's journalists. The Guardian isn’t even anti-Israel.

No critics of Israel are antisemitic, but critics of Israel are always called antisemitic by bad Jews.

Has the BBC been compromised by the pro-Israel lobby!!?? Of course. They are not biased against Israel but are FORCED to be biasedin favour of Israel and have NO CHOICE but to do and report what The Lobby tells them. Bad lobby.

The BBC is BOMBARDED with emails from all over the world accusing it of bias. But it isn’t biased. Journalist Orla is undeserving of criticism. No one who says anything against Israel is deserving of criticism. Without the CHILLING ASSAULT and PRESSURE of The Lobby, Jeremy Bowen wouldn’t have been investigated for his bias. But he wasn’t biased. The BBC were FORCED to investigate Bowen, and any journalist who’s ever been investigated has been so because of The Lobby.

Complaints of bias are unjustified, there is no anti-Israel bias. Did I say that already?

Why does Simon Plosker of Honest Reporting ATTACK the BBC and WHO does he WORK FOR? The Zionist Mafia, must be. Honest Reporting is bad.

“Demonization of Israel” and “Anti-Israel bias” only exist in quotation marks.

The BBC didn’t broadcast the DEC Gaza appeal because it was bullied by Israel.

"I am a Jew who loves Israel. Allow me to clarify in case you find the title misleading. “Israeli settlements are an obstacle”. An obstacle to terrorism, that is.

Let’s start with some major events that occurred in the Middle East in recent years. Mahmoud Abbas has just announced his resignation in protest to his perceived lack of American support in halting Israeli settlement construction. This follows on closely from a press conference between Hilary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu where Clinton publicly acknowledged Netanyahu’s willingness to offer a partial settlement freeze which no Israeli government since the signing of the Oslo accords has ever had to consider as a precondition to peace talks. Not only did the left wing labour government of Rabin who signed at Oslo not offer a settlement freeze, they kept building!

Anyway, the current hot topics are the push for a complete settlement freeze and the Goldstone report which accuses Israel and Hamas of war crimes. There was Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008 and prior to that, the second Lebanon War, Ariel Sharon’s coma and perhaps most significant, the unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

Now follow this closely. Taking recent years events into context the Israeli settlements that were considered an obstacle to peace in fact played a significant part in preventing more widescale violence.

Gush Katif, Netzarim and the other Israeli settlements in Gaza were protected by IDF soldiers permanently stationed there. During this period, there were murderous terrorist attacks on the Jewish communities but let’s look at the difference between then and now. Then, the IDF based in Gaza would carry our counter-terror operations which prevented the mass build up of weapons which Hamas have now acquired since the disengagement.

Israel left Gaza. Then came a spate of terrorist attacks and a huge increase in rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli Southern belt communities. Eventually, after eight years of terrorist attacks and 10,000 rockets whose frequency increased to 2,500 (a quarter of the total rockets fired since 2001) which hit southern Israel in only three years! And this led to Cast Lead in January 2009 which wreaked havoc and destruction in Gaza.

There is always the question of what if. Ariel Sharon thought that if he withdrew from Gaza then the International community would support him on other matters. Instead it culminated in operation Cast Lead and a huge drop in support and more criticism for Israel in the international arena.

But what if Israel had not disengaged? Cast Lead may have never needed to happen or at least on the scale that it did.

There is talk about Israel leaving the Golan Heights and the West Bank unilaterally. But right now we have a tense calm in these areas and the Gaza withdrawal has provided an obvious precedent should a unilateral Israeli withdrawal be considered again.

Sad to say but it will. I just hope that the Israeli government have learnt from past mistakes."

Tuesday, 3 November 2009

According to actress Mia Farrow, Israel is to blame.After another tunnel collapse and death over the weekend, Farrow wrote on her blog:

"The 1.5 million people living in Gaza depend on hundreds of tunnels beneath the border to get fuel and other products since Gaza has been sealed off after Hamas takeover in June 2007. But Israeli bombings are frequent and more than 130 Palestinians, many of them children have been killed while working in the tunnels."

She doesn't question why there are many children working in the tunnels that are dangerous enough without the risk of being bombed by Israel in response to rocket attacks.
Nor does she mention that the rockets that Hamas fire into Israel, causing Israel to bomb the tunnels, are smuggled through those very tunnels, which is why Israel wants to stop them.
Also, Israel's bombings are not at all frequent, and the vast majority of Palestinian tunnel deaths have nothing to do with Israel.
Incidentally, the day after Farrow's comments, a Field Work Coordinator for the Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza blamed Hamas, demanding that they do more to protect the tunnel workers. He said:

"Our research on the ground has shown that a total of 120 people have died in tunnel collapses. Another seven were killed inside tunnels as a result of Israeli aerial attacks."
"The government here in Gaza just wants to make money off the tunnel owners and that's it. They take money from the people but do not provide any services to them. They don't care about the conditions for the workers, whether or not it's safe or the quality of the goods coming in from Egypt."